Paper detail

New description of neutrino flavour evolution in solar matter

Assuming that the interacting neutrino and the solar matter can be treated as an open quantum system we formulate a formalism of neutrino state evolution in terms of the Bloch vector, obtained by solving a quasilinear extension of the von Neumann equation. We broaden the classical Wolfenstein formalism by means of exploiting the strictly linear von Neumann equation and reinterpreting the results in terms of the quantities appropriate for the quasilinear approach. We obtain similar predictions for the averaged neutrino survival probability measured on Earth in both approaches, differing by details inside the Sun where the quasilinear evolution predicts a suppression of oscillations. We discuss the issues of energy transfer between the neutrino and the Sun and the speed of the state evolution in both approaches.